Best cards to invest in?

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In my opinion, these five questions are important to ask yourself first before diving deeply into collectibles:

  • Do you have an emergency fund?
  • Do you have a 401(k), pension, or another retirement account that you’re actively contributing to?
  • Do you own property?
  • Are you in debt (including student loans)?
  • Are you taking care of your health/well-being?

I firmly believe that Pokemon can and should be enjoyed at all economic levels. Finding that level and how it relates to your financial situation is crucial.

If you have met your financial goals and would like to supplement with Pokemon, my advice is to collect what you like first and foremost. If it goes to zero, you will still be happy with what you have put together. I could tell you what I think will do well in the future, but it will be dependent on your financial situation, interests, capacity for risk, and time horizon.

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disregard all other advice and put everything you have into this

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I am learning from you, thank you, and later today, whilst I wait for my flight, I will read your linked thread. At first glance, it appears insightful, and I am sure I will learn plenty.

Honestly, five years is entirely arbitrary, a random number of years that seems long enough to allow for initial inflation and time to settle. I hope to see most, if not all, sets increase in value, but how much and how quickly is, for me, far too unknown to consider guessing…unless the set contains no Charizard! :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I really like the crown zenith legendary dogs. At least suicune and raikou look amazing. Entei is whatever with its big feet, but the volcano is cool.

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Thank you for your words, I will say that I am comfortably able to afford things. Without any regard for price, I would love to hear your recommendations. I was battling for a red cheeks Pikachu, but it went to $4k and I gave up on it. I’m looking at getting a 25 year box, and a complete 102/102 base set collection. Possibly might fight for a yellow cheeks until I can get a red cheeks.

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We all start somewhere. Best of luck.

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Yeah of course it is, but this thread sounded to me a bit like „I saw on YouTube that you can get rich of Pokémon cards, I want that as well“. I am sorry if my answer sounded harsh or anything like that and if I misunderstood OP.

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Fixed for ya

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I see your point. All good my friend :slightly_smiling_face:

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All I’d say is don’t invest in Dark Dragonite from Rockets Silver Deck. Horrible card with zero upside potential. Probably best if you or anyone you know have this card, BIN list it for as little as possible and move onto greener pastures. Feel free to DM me the listing so I can help get this atrocity off the market.

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WoTC Boxes will have the lowest proportional return because they have already risen so dramatically in the past five years.

For example, I would not expect the Base Set Unlimited Booster Box to 4x in the next 5 years. That would require a ~$30,000 increase, which would be insane. However, I would expect a lot of S/M, SW/SH, and S/V boxes to 4x in the next 5 years because moving from $150 to $600 is significantly easier. This is why buying sealed product at scale (i.e., 6-box cases at a time at below MSPR) has very little downside risk.

Regarding Base Set, I expect the biggest growth to always be with the 1st Edition Holos. It’s not to say that Pikachu or the starters won’t appreciate over time, but they are significantly more abundant due to how commons, uncommons, and rares were printed on the sheet and distributed via boxes and boosters.

I personally think a lot of Diamond & Pearl and Platinum era booster boxes are underpriced given their age and rarity. I also believe that the Lv.X. cards are underpriced in the current market, but demand for these cards is pretty (understandably) low.

I see growth potential for high-end vintage Japanese promos not released in English (e.g., PLAY campaign), cards limited by release (e.g., Art Academy, Design Contests), and trophies (e.g., Snap Cards, Battle Road and Winter Challenge prizes). I do think English vintage chase cards from the e-Reader and EX era (i.e., crystals, gold stars) will appreciate as well and are largely underpriced. When it comes to WoTC, 1st Ed > Unlimited in terms of collectibility and rarity. I would not recommend stocking up on low pop vintage cards with huge PSA 10 premiums, as the pop reports can (and do) increase regularly.

Hope this helps. More than anything, I would recommend finding what jives with you and then base a potential investment around that.

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:goldstar: :frog:

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memes aside, I will use this opportunity to pump gold stars.

Scarcest english set cards. A lot of them mint are roughly the cost of an artset of packs or less. The big boys are really high, but the fun ting about pokemon is youd be hard pressed to find a collector who has just one or 2 gold stars without the lust for the rest

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Nice. He’s one-arming his stonks.

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I was thinking about this. Were gold stars 2 per case? Temporal forces and twilight masquerade special illustration rares are similar pull rate, and alt arts from sword and shield were even harder pull rates.

Consider this when people talk about 10k pop report for moonbreon and other modern chase cards. It’s all relative to demand, which currently is very high, much higher than demand was for EX series.

I’m actually quite curious to see where cards like moonbreon end up in a few more years and when it begins to eclipse lower end gold stars. I think it will happen, it’s just a question of when.

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Pull rate is less important than quantity printed

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I will disagree with you there, since quantity printed will be scaled to demand at the time, and absolute quantity printed does not matter at all by itself. Quantity is just the supply side of supply and demand. Modern chase cards while Pokemon is popular have very high demand. Higher print quantity is not impeding price appreciation. There are countless examples of truly unique, 1 of 1 items that are worthless because no demand exists for them. Everyone intuitively knows this, which is why you don’t see random pieces of mail, old utility bills, or children’s’ report cards selling on eBay every day for vast sums.

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While demand in Pokemon will grow over the coming years, demand in specific modern alt arts is not necessarily going to grow equivalently. At some point, a cooler card will be released and the old “cool cards” will be left to the wayside. If you were around for the COVID boom, you would remember how incredibly cool amazing rares, rainbow rares, shiny rares, gold cards, etc. were. These were all left behind for alt arts. It’s only a matter of time until something more desirable comes along and attention is shifted.

Will there always be demand for SW/SH alt arts? Probably, as it marks a point in which many people reentered the hobby and so nostalgia will play a component. But my point aligns with @pfm’s statement, that quantity printed is very important to consider because demand fluctuates over time.

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Almost got me :smirk:

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Just curious as to why you’d think LvX. are underpriced?

And in a similar vein this point:

This is obviously just my own opinion but broadly speaking, all the CGI rulebox Pokemon (but CGI being the main factor) all blend in together. Unsure about LvX. but BW EX are a lot rarer than the GX, V and ex of today yet it’s not like they look distinctive. Put them all together and they all look like bulk junk which is reinforced by their artwork.

I suppose that could end up underpricing LvX. and BW EX by association instead of actual rarity, but then, they were printed during the least popular era and now when there are most eyes on the hobby, relatively few people are going back to those anyway. So where will the demand for them come from if it doesn’t exist now?

Going back to the CGI fads, that’s what they were fads and I’d argue that for all the rarities over the 25 years, you can break all of it down into 2 categories; art and filler. Art is generally timeless and filler is generally dated.

Comparing ‘alts’ or special arts to filler doesn’t seem like a great comparison. Not that bulk common-holo cards will get rare anytime soon, but long into the future, people could still pick them up and they would still be fresh. Nostalgia is welcome but not needed whereas filler only relies on nostalgia after the fad has worn off.

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